Valuing Cultural Heritage

What value do we place on our cultural heritage, and to what extent should we preserve historic and culturally important sites and artefacts from the ravages of weather, pollution, development and use by the general public? This innovative book attempts to answer these important questions by exploring how non-market valuation techniques - used extensively in environmental economics - can be applied to cultural heritage.

The book includes twelve comprehensive case studies that estimate public values for a diverse set of cultural goods, including English cathedrals, Bulgarian monasteries, rock paintings in Canada, statues in the US, and a medieval city in Africa. The authors demonstrate the potential utility of these techniques, and highlight the important social values that cultural heritage can generate. Given limited resources, such studies can help set priorities and aid the decision making process in terms of their preservation, restoration and use. The authors conclude by reviewing the majority of cultural valuation studies done to date, and draw some general conclusions about the results achieved and the potential benefits, as well as the limitations, of valuing these types of goods.

This highly original book will be of great use and interest to academics in the fields of environmental, resource, and cultural economics, as well as NGOs and policymakers involved in cultural heritage at the national, international and global level.